Rockin' Chair

This rocking chair has seen better days.

Where do we begin? With a bullet-pointed list.

• The corduroy is at LEAST thirty years old and has never been cleaned.
• Staples are coming undone.
• The cushion on the back of the chair was mysteriously attached permanently to the chair (look at the second knob doo-hickey from the left). 
• Bottom left corner is peeling off.
• It wobbles a LOT. 

But! It's a family heirloom, and kids just destroy nice stuff anyway, so I've let it sit as-is since we brought it to our home.  When we were packing up my parents' house a very wise aunt suggested I NEEDED to keep it.  It didn't take much convincing to agree, though I wish mom and dad had kept the all-wooden one.

Because cleaning wood is a heck of a lot easier than upholstering. 

Here's the bottom of the chair. Yes, I thought it said "ass toys" when I first glanced at it.  Eek. The only thing holding on the skirt was a line of staples which I easily removed with the wrong tool. Note to self: organize the tools. I snipped off the one loop connecting the removable pad to the chair. I still don't understand how mom accidentally sewed it on. It looks like it would have been a LOT more effort. Maybe she was sick of us taking it off and playing with it. That's a pretty likely scenario, actually...

 Bottom of the chair! Complete with particle board (guess it HAS to be upholstered after all), a few screw holes, dripping poly, some splitting wood (uh, what was that about....wobbling?) and a few extra screws.  Not sure what those are all about.

I saved this picture on my computer as "naked chair", which might cause a few double-takes in the future. Here's the progress as of the end of nap time today. I need to clean it really well and think about what comes next. I *think* that unless I do a skirt again, I'll need to remove the legs. All those extra screw holes and splitting wood makes me think I should leave that alone and just make a dang skirt. Decisions, decisions!